Where Does The Bible Come From?

It is important to understand that no one possesses the original writings of either Jewish or Christian biblical texts. There are also no first prints, no exclusive editions, and no handwritten copies. The original writings that were later combined into the book that people know today as the Bible were written on papyrus, a paper-like substance made from the water plant bearing the same name.

This substance deteriorates over time Click here and that’s exactly what happened to the original writings of the biblical texts. The books that make the Jewish and the Christian Bibles were copied by hand over and over again. There is a belief that this manual copying led to the writings that are available today being very inaccurate. To this day scholars study both Christian and Hebrew Bibles and their sources.

For example, there are thousands of ancient manuscripts available today that make up the collection of the books known as the New Testament. This allows scholars to tell with a high probability as to which manuscript was the earliest and what it said.

In addition to this, many of early Christian writers used quotes from the New Testament in their writings, being another source to derive material for verification from. Finally, from the early days of Christianity the books that later became the New Testament have been translated into a number of different languages, which also provides a source for yet another external reliability and accuracy check.

The issues with the Hebrew Bible are more complicated because the Hebrew Bible is much older than the Christian Bible. Much of the book has been created up to 1,000 years before the New Testament, which means a lot of copying by hand to preserve the texts. Another complication has to do with the fact that unlike early Christian communities, Jewish communities strictly controlled who had access to the manuscripts.